This invention relates to a microwave connector assembly for use in electrical connection of microwave circuit components and to a microwave circuit arrangement comprising the microwave circuit components connected by a microwave connector assembly of the type described.
In Japanese Patent Publication No. Syo 59-10,601, namely, 10,601/1984, a conventional microwave circuit arrangement is disclosed which comprises a conductive base plate having a pair of principal surfaces and a plurality of microwave circuit components mounted on one of the principal surfaces. The microwave circuit components and the conductive base plate are accommodated in a conductive housing electrically connected to the conductive base plate so as to electromagnetically shield the microwave circuit components and to reduce occurrence of an undesired wave. Such microwave circuit components are implemented as a microwave integrated circuit (MIC) which may be either a hybrid integrated circuit (HIC) or a monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC).
More particularly, each of the microwave circuit components has a plurality of radio frequency (RF) terminals for receiving and transmitting a microwave signal. On manufacturing a transmitter or a receiver, each of the microwave circuit components should electrically and mutually be connected to an adjacent one of the microwave circuit components through the radio frequency terminals.
For this purpose, a strip line circuit is laid on the other principal surface opposite to the above-mentioned one principal surface and each radio frequency terminal is electrically connected to the strip line circuit through a through hole. In this event, the radio frequency terminals are led to the other principal surface through the through holes and soldered to the strip line circuit in the conventional microwave circuit arrangement.
However, it is very troublesome to assemble the above-mentioned circuit arrangement because the base plate must be subjected to any processing on both sides thereof.
In addition, soldering should be carried out in a restricted space by the use of a soldering gun and is therefore very time-consuming. An amount of solder is susceptible to variation in the soldering. Such variation of the amount of solder results in an electrical discontinuity of a microwave transmission line which is formed through the microstrip line, the radio frequency terminals, and the microwave circuit components. This gives rise to variation of characteristics in the microwave transmission line.
Moreover, another electrical discontinuity inevitably takes place at points of connection between the microstrip line and the radio frequency terminals and brings about serious mismatches of impedance with an increase of a frequency of the microwave.
Furthermore, use of the microstrip line makes the conductive housing inevitably bulky because the microstrip line must comparatively become long. Such a bulky housing often causes undesired mode excitation to occur therein and might induce undesired coupling to any other circuits.
It may be mentioned here that a microwave circuit arrangement of the above-mentioned type comprises a high frequency part, such as the microwave circuit components and the microstrip line, operable in a microwave frequency band of, for example, 2 GHz and a low frequency part, such as a bias circuit and an intermediate frequency converter, operable in a frequency band lower than the microwave frequency band.
In the above-referenced microwave circuit arrangement, no consideration is paid to separation of the low frequency part from the high frequency part. Accordingly, the microwave partially leaks from the high frequency part into the low frequency part, which might give rise to objectionable interference and undesired coupling between the high and the low frequency parts.